The SEIS concluded that KXL's "approval or denial" — misleading because its southern half is already 75% complete via an Obama March 2012 executive order — "is unlikely to have a substantial impact on the rate of development" of the tar sands. Therefore, it will also have little impact on climate change, according to ERM's SEIS.

A DeSmogBlog investigation also reveals that the American Petroleum Institute has spent $22.03 million lobbying at the federal level on Keystone XL and/or tar sands issues since the pipeline was initially proposed in June 2008. Further, some of those oil lobbyists have direct ties to both President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the two men who have the final say on KXL.

Above and beyond lobbying, API has also devoted much time, money, and effort on pro-Keystone public relations. Its most recent ongoing campaign is called Oil Sands Fact Check (OSFC).

As explained by the Houston Chronicle, OSFC was created as a tar-sands parallel toEnergy in Depth (EID), another industry-created front group to promote fracking: "[OSFC] is borrowing a page from Energy In Depth’s playbook, with regular 'issue alerts' to reporters and others, and plans for touting the message via Facebook, Twitter and other social media. To lure in critics as well as supporters, the group has ads that appear on Google when users search for 'tar sands' – a synonym often used derisively – and other related terms.

API also created an astroturf group called Energy Citizens during the climate change legislative battle in 2009. "The objective of these rallies is to put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy and to aim a loud message at those states’ U.S. senators to avoid the mistakes embodied in the House climate bill and the Obama Administration’s tax increases on our industry," wrote API head Jack Gerard in a memo obtained by Greenpeace USAexplaning the rationale behind the campaign to API members. "We are asking all API members to assist in these...activities. The size of the company does not matter, and every participant adds to the strength of our collective voice."

"It’s clear that, devoid of factually-based energy and climate arguments, API needs to spend vast sums on lobbyists and campaign contributions to secure the access it needs to political power," Tyson Slocum, Director of Public Citizen's Energy Program told DeSmogBlog in an interview.

Friends of the Earth-US Senior Campaigner Ross Hammond echoed Slocum in an interview with DeSmog. "It's no wonder that API and its members continue to tout the ERM report as 'proof' that Keystone will make a minimal contribution to climate change despite the fact that the EPA and top scientists all take the opposite view. The fact that ERM is a paid member of API should have disqualified it from writing the Draft SEIS," he said.